1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a postcure tire inflator for inflating and cooling a vulcanized tire and a tire feeding equipment thereof and, more particularly, to an equipment for automatically adjusting a clearance between upper and lower rims.
2. Description of the Prior Art
As a prior-art postcure inflator, a turnover type postcure inflator has been widely used. This type of inflator has two sets of upper and lower rims for holding a tire in relation to one cavity of a tire vulcanizer for the purpose of setting a vulcanized tire inflating and cooling time to one cycle per hour or more of tire vulcanizer operation, and two right and left symmetrical cavities like a vulcanizer having two cavities.
To perform the inflation and cooling of a tire, such as a radial tire in general use in these days, which requires high accuracy, there is demanded a tire feeding equipment which is able to center the vulcanized tire, that has come from the tire vulcanizer, in proper position on the lower rim of the postcure inflator. However, since, in the turnover type postcure inflator, the two sets of upper and lower rims rotate, there is a spatial limit to the mounting of a mechanism for centering the tire. To cope with this drawback, there have been proposed various carrying devices, for example, a carrying device (refer to Japanese Patent Publication No. Sho 63-12971) of such a design that a vulcanized tire from the tire vulcanizer is supported at the lower side, loaded on a belt conveyor located between the tire vulcanizer and the postcure tire inflator, and carried to a point above the lower rim, and then, after the centering of the tire in position, the lower rim is raised; a carrying device (refer to Laid-Open Japanese Patent Application No. Sho 60-182116) that the vulcanized tire taken out of the vulcanizer is supported at the lower side by an arm and carried to an intermediate position between the tire vulcanizer and the postcure tire inflator, where the tire is loaded on a feed arm of the postcure tire inflator and carried to a point above the lower rim, which is then moved up to the tire; and also a carrier equipment (refer to Laid-Open Japanese Patent Application No. Sho 59-14933) which has a chuck for holding the upper beam of the vulcanized tire, and carries the tire from the center of the vulcanizer to the lower rim at the center of the postcure tire inflator by means of a carrying arm which is vertically movable and swingable from the center of the tire vulcanizer to the intermediate position.
However, the carrying device using the belt carrying device and the feed arm not only becomes a complicated mechanism but can not properly center the tire in position as expected; and in the carrying device for carrying the tire to the lower rim at the center of the postcure tire inflator by the use of the swingable and vertically movable carrying arm, the carrying device goes in between the upper and lower rims, widening the clearance between the separable upper and lower rims. Because of the above-described construction, the equipment has become large in size. This equipment is provided with a sliding device which moves the lower rim between the lower position of the upper rim mounted on the postcure tire inflator and the intermediate position on the vulcanizer side, so that the vulcanized tire can be mounted directly on the lower rim without upper spatial limit. It is, therefore, possible to reliably center the vulcanized tire on the postcure inflator by the use of a feeding equipment of simple mechanism and also to easily replace the upper and lower rims when tire sizes are changed, by utilizing the intermediate position.
Either machine described above generally uses a spacer- or screw-type rim clearance adjusting device for adjusting a clearance between the upper and lower rims. The spacer-type rim clearance adjusting device requires much time to replace the tire, while the screw-type adjusting device is designed to turn a screw by a wrench. This screw-type rim clearance adjusting device, however, has such a problem that turning a screw by the wrench in a narrow space in the postcure tire inflator body to be turned over requires much time.